Simon Bennett is New Power Rangers Executive Producer
Simon Bennett, director of many past episodes, has just revealed he’s the new EP of Power Rangers.
The Power Rangers franchise may be about to see some big changes. Ever since 2015 Judd “Chip” Lynn has been executive producer on the franchise, overseeing Dino Charge, Ninja Steel, and Beast Morphers. While he wasn’t the only executive producer on those season he was the one who had a large portion of control over the show, working with the cast and crew on nearly every level of production. Now it’s being reported that Lynn won’t be the only executive producer working on the series in New Zealand.
Thanks to The Power Scoop via No Pink Spandex, we’ve learned that Simon Bennett (director of various Ninja Steel and Beast Morphers episodes) has, as his IMDB profile states, ”taken over the reins as EP of Hasbro’s famed Power Rangers TV series.” This change, according to his profile, happened sometime in 2019. This is further confirmed by Bennett bio on his personal Instagram page, which he gives his working title as “Executive Producer – Power Rangers.” Bennett has previously produced popular New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street.
This change looks to have happened around or before October of 2019, as an article from the New Zealand news website Stuff was the first to state that Bennett was now executive producer of Power Rangers.
This is big news for Power Rangers because it puts into question whether Lynn will continue to be an executive producer on the series. While of course a show can have more than one EP, the wording of Bennett’s bio on IMDB suggests he’s taking over for Lynn. We’ve reached out to Hasbro for comment and will update this story if we hear anything.
It should be noted however that during the most recent season of Beast Morphers, Lynn hasn’t been writing as many episodes. While he wrote or co-wrote most episodes in Dino Charge and Ninja Steel, he’s only written a few during Beast Morphers. While he could have been focused on other parts of production this might be an indicator he’s stepping back from the very hands-on approach he’s had in the making of the show since returning in 2015.
In the past Lynn has spoken about wanting heavy involvement in any season he works on. Back in 2011 he revealed to fansite Henshin Justice Unlimited that he had been asked to work on Power Rangers Samurai but turned it down because “the kind of involvement I might be interested in wasn’t available, so ultimately I declined.” Lynn wanted to work on casting, writing, directing, and hang out with the cast and crew. The producers of Samurai mostly wanted him to write, so he turned them down.
Of course Lynn may still be involved in the show in other capacity but since Bennett has “taken over the reins of EP” it makes us question if Lynn would still want to be involved in the series if he doesn’t have that same level of control he’s always wanted.
Also, Lynn stated in another interview with HJU that one of his pieces of advice for someone trying to get into the film business is, “don’t stay on the same project or in the same genre for too long. When they offer you more money to stay, demand more responsibilities so you can learn new skills. But at some point, jump to the next stepping stone before you tumble down stream.”
It may be as simple as Lynn is moving on to something else and that he got everything he wanted out of Power Rangers for the time being. We’ll have to wait and see if that’s the case.
When Bennett’s involvement as Executive Producer begins isn’t clear. Beast Morphers’ second season finished filming around June but they’re still more than likely working on it in post-production. Bennett may be helping with that but it’s unlikely he was a major creative force on the season. More likely is that he’ll have a much bigger role in the season that will air in 2021 which is probably in the planning stages at Hasbro right now.
Original article, Shamus Kelley